South Africa, June 21 -- As the African National Congress (ANC) celebrates its 2019 election victory, South Africans will now be turning their collective attention to President Cyril Ramaphosa to see if he can deliver on his party's promises. Yet we surely cannot afford to ignore one of the most startling statistics to emerge from these elections: only 61% of SA's youth registered to vote in 2019 - which means that 6 million youngsters did not vote in the recent May elections. According to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), these figures mark the lowest youth representation seen in an election since 1999.

Why should we be concerned?

Well, in simple terms, today's youth are tomorrow's political, economic and social leaders. ...